Shooting and fishing: 'Trinny's brown jacket smelt of money, held together by a three tiered cartridge belt'

Searching through YouTube for Sonny Boy Williamson's lament Fattening Frogs For Snakes, I came across Trinny and Susannah, the TV make-over couple currently re-inventing themselves as an online comedy duo – Trinny and Susannah: What They Did Next. As I sat transfixed by the pros and cons of colonic irrigation, I remembered hearing about this programme before somewhere.

And indeed, Trinny had explained it all last winter at Tillypronie in Aberdeenshire where we had both been asked to shoot at a time when she was making the series.

The first thought after meeting her was how on earth was she going to survive in the snow at -16C. I hestitate to say she is emaciated, but she is jolly thin. (Actually it wasn't the first thought. The first thought was, how did she get lips that shape?).

Anyway, she had to sit next to me the night before the shoot but she is not really interested in kite-flying, cider-making or wind farms and neither of us had read Wolf Hall. And I wasn't going to ask after her lips. But we struggled on.

The next morning we set forth with Trinny surprisingly bereft of tweed, wearing a waisted, thigh-length dark brown jacket that smelt of money, held together by a monumentally smart three tiered cartridge belt. Her headgear was one of those furry Russian- style hats with ear flaps made of racoon.

Shortly before lunch she started remarking rather testily that she was very cold, to which I think I said, jocular-like, that this was probably because she was very thin and should have put on an extra woolly.

"But I've got on seven layers," she wailed.

Shooting it turned out was a newish thing for Trinny, who had adopted the stance of a foot soldier at Waterloo – musket held firmly forward as if to receive cavalry, rather than pheasants. But when she hit one everyone clapped. Which was nice.

Later hanging about after tea and baths it was reported that there were strange noises coming from Trinny's room. "That'll be her pumping up her lips," remarked the resident wag. And getting a laugh proceeded to expand on what else the noises might have been, until beaten into silence by his wife.

Well, it now turns out she "does" Botox three times a year, as "exclusively revealed" in a promotional interview. Which I think I had guessed. In the spirit of self-parody, I suspect we can now look forward to "Trinny and Susannah do posh shooting" . I do hope so.

www.trinnyandsusannah.com

This article was first published in The Scotsman on Saturday, 21 August, 2010